Left In Lowell

Anyone who is on one side of the political “aisle,” arguing with the “other side,” knows that underlying the conversation is a fundimental difference in philosophical premise which is exceptionally hard to breach. You either end up thinking that we are all in this together and it is best for us all to contribute to our well-being (liberal) or that systems of self-interest work best - that greed is good (conservative). Unless you’re in the sticky middle, which conservatives argue are on their side, and liberals argue the opposite. (It actually appears to turn out, liberals are more correct.)

The greed philosphy was never so prevalent in the last century than in the “trickle down” economics that the not-actually-popular Reagan espoused in the 80s. It remains part of the conservative lexicon, albeit in new forms, since trickle-down fell out of fashion when it didn’t, you know, actually work. Those people will argue that people generally agree with them - taxpayers always want their taxes cut and their money back in their pocket. Well, that’s a testable theory, and this diary on dKos takes a look at such an experiment:

Ernst Fehr of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics conducted a game. The game was called “The Public Goods Game.” It went like this: teams were formed, with each team having 4 individuals. Each individual got $10 house money. The game had 10 rounds of play. In each and every round each individual could anonymously contribute any part, $0-$10, to a kitty for a proposed “group project.” At the conclusion of each and every round the house doubled the total contributions to the kitty of each group and then divided that sum equally among the 4 players in their respective groups.

What Fehr and his colleagues found was that individuals generally contributed $5 in the first round. This was a safe bet, halfway between full cooperation and full defection. As the game progressed through the 9 remaining rounds, cooperation among the 4 members on each team disintegrated until no one threw any money into the kitty. Why did cooperation dwindle?

The diarist goes on to describe the findings of the game when played over and over again as showing three kinds of people - the knaves, who, if given any opportunity, will pull out of group contributions. They constitute about 20-30%. Next are the saints, who are also 20-30%, who always contribute even in the face of disintigrating cooperation from others. The middle group, about 40-60%, are “moralists.” They conditionally coorperate to the greater good - they are happy to put money into the pot, but when things break down and some people are getting away with donating nothing, they start to pull out of the system as well.

This middle majority doesn’t believe that they shouldn’t contribute; quite the contrary. As long as there’s a system in place to punish those who don’t pull their weight, they willingly do. If you play this game without anonymity and with penalties, where everyone in the group has to say what they put into the pot, as soon as there is a system in place for them to protest the knaves, the moralists will even restore group cooperation (even if it costs them a little extra to do so) using that system. The diarist puts it this way (bold mine):

What’s the point of all this? The notion of cooperation among non-related individuals has fallen into disrepute. Economists like Milton Friedman and the so-called Chicago School tout “the rational agent” as the sine qua non of economic behavior. The rational agent thinks only of self-interest. Greed is good, according to the Chicago School. The Invisible Hand of the marketplace may inadvertently steer the self-interested actor in the general direction of the common good, though not through any conscious effort by the agent. Any efforts to coerce the rational agent into altruistic action will be fought off and rejected.

What Fehr and his group, along with the Neuro-economists, are showing through empirical study is that people are hard-wired to cooperate. Self-interest is not a determined impulse in human beings. What people really have hard wired into their brains is a sense of justice and fair play, a capacity for nuturance of others –even non-kin others, a keen eye for in-group norms, and, surprisingly, a self-organizing tendency to make hierarchies.

Fehr’s work, as well as that of many others in many other disciplines, gives the lie to the entire Conservative Agenda which takes self-righteous self-interest as its core value.

To me, this study and its conclusions are empirical evidence of that which I have long felt to be true. That the majority of Americans (hell, people) are not selfish bastard conservatives, but actually, given a fair system that punishes people who do not cooperate, eager to have a system of distribution of resources that helps everyone, not just themselves.

The problem that we have in this country is that our tax system is rather skewed and fails to punish knavish people in the upper income bracket, or knavish big business. The problem is not the concept of taxation itself.